Hehe, just to make your work difficult
. I like the sound of thegame that you are working on. But, I think that the full potential of space based combat/trading crpgs hasn''t been fully explored. Most of the ones that you hear about are just buy goods, kill pirates, sell goods, take bodyguard missions. (okay I admit that I haven''t been playing them as they sound so dull).There is so much that could be done with these sort of games, for instance although Space may be a void with planets in in these games, that doesn''t mean that the gameplay should just be about circling ships and blasting them. !
It would be good if there were more tactical Magic style weapons, ie. tractor beams, wall-shields, space mines, etc.
It would rock if there more character interaction involved with people doing stuff like research, whilst (bandits) try and steal their minerals / technoloy (okay that is cliched.. but still cool). It would be an improvement if there were more special encounters, ie. you come across a ship which has had engine failure, the captain asks forhelp BUT ! It is a rich cargo transport ship with lots of valuables / equipment in, so what do you do.. do you steal the goods (blow up the ship). Or, do you help fix / escort it back to base? If you blow it up what are the good / bad consequences.. and vice-versa.
Coming across drunk space captains, and people who want to blow up suns/ planets as firework displays. There is a lot of possibility for more interesting and humerous characters to appear. Also likethe magical items in RPGs can you collect things which give you new powers / improve your abilities.. can you buy trnslation droids to help with understanding alien culture.
I agree that they haven''t had the magival mysterious .. what am I going to find next aspect.
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On the subject of mediaeval fantasy games, the reason why I prefer these early fantasy settings is because.
1. There is Magic (tactical + fun).
2. The scenery and architecture can be beautiful, and is very much preferable (to me) to these bland warehous esettings that we get in modern games. Baldur''s Gate looks much nicer than Fallout . (But Fallout is the better **Roleplaying** game).
3. More melee combat *enemies*, as being shot in modern / scifi games is pretty dull in terms of gameplay. Ie. Damn he got me from 50 ft away, not as in arrggh look at the the teeth on that beastie. (
4. It gives a more plausible "reason" for the existance of weird creatures in the world. It is accepted that these thngs exist in fantasy novels, whereas in sci-fi you aren''t going to find that many different species on earth with a plausible reason.
+ This doesn''t mean that the creatures have to have poorly worked out cultures or personalities, it just means that these things are an accepted setting.
Yeah, I too think there''s a lot of unexplored gameplay in the SF setting. The problem has been a severe lack of imagination, which is funny when you consider that the setting implies the possibility of strange, bizarre experiences.
